Charlie Jingle walked into the long room with the long table and long Commissioners' faces in it. He went to a chair at the head of the table, and sat down, a small man in loose, seedy clothing looking rather lost in a high-backed chair with a regal crest carved in the wood.

"You," asked one of the Commissioners, "are Charles Jingle?"

Charlie nodded his head, a small nod from a small man sitting in a big man's chair.

"You are aware of course ..." began the Commissioner, but Charlie Jingle waved his fingers and cut him off.

"Sure, sure, let's can the bunko and get down to cases."

"You have been summoned here ..." began the same Commissioner, and Charlie Jingle waved his fingers again.

"But I ain't gonna anyway," said Charlie Jingle. The Commissioners stirred, cleared their throats, slid their bottoms with unease on their chairs.

"You understand," said the Commissioner, "that your license may be revoked if you insist on being uncooperative?"

"Sure," said Charlie Jingle. "I understand."

A bulky man, who had been standing at a window with his back to the seated members of the Commission while they talked with Charlie, turned to face them. A man with a heavy, grey face that had no humor in it. Charlie Jingle watched him slowly cross to the table and recognized him as Commissioner Jergen, head of the Fight Commission.

"Jingle," said the man in a dry voice, "I'm going to make an example of you if you don't come across. I'm going to smear your name from coast to coast. I'm going to blackball you so hard you won't get a job anyplace, at anything! Get the message?"

Charlie Jingle got up from his chair and walked to the door. "This the way out?" he asked.

"Hold on!" roared Commissioner Jergen, and Charlie Jingle stopped with his hand on the knob, looking back with polite inquisitiveness at him.

"You goddam people think you can pull quick deals on the Public and on the Fight Commission. I'm here to prove you can't!"

Charlie Jingle laughed.

"You're here to make a big noise, and scare all the scrawny citizens into a confession, Jergen. Don't kid me!"

"I suppose you've got too many contacts to be frightened?"

"Contacts? No, I don't have a single damn contact. All I got is my two hands, and you already told me I ain't gonna be able to make a livin' with them, so why should I stick around here anymore?"

Commissioner Jergen pulled a chair forward.

"Siddown, Charlie. Let's talk like reasonable men," he said. Charlie Jingle searched his face for a lie or a trick. Finding none, he went back to the table and sat down.

The Commissioner waited a moment, and then said earnestly:

"Listen, Jingle. Seventy years ago this country outlawed prize-fighting. It was barbarous, they said. Men shouldn't fight men. Men shouldn't capitalize on other men as if they were animals. Okay. They changed it. Now we got the Pug-Factories. But we also have the same thing that went on before. We have the grifters and the shysters and the fixers operating at full tilt all over the place. There's a few honest guys in the game. I hear you're one of them. All we want is to nail the crooks! We want to bust the Fix Syndicate wide open, get me? Now, if you love the game the way I hear you do—not for the money, but for the smell and the excitement—why won't you help us bust them wide?"

Charlie Jingle shook his head.

"You got it wrong, Jergen. I know about the fixers. But I never consorted with them. If I did, I could've retired a rich man a long time ago."

"Then how about that Saturday night fiasco at the Golum Auditorium? You call that a straight fight?"

Charlie Jingle shrugged his shoulders.

"All I know is I sent my boy in there. He's a Tank, okay. He's up against the newest fighting machine invented. Okay. He drops him. I'm as much surprised as you. All the odds read against me. I got a rebuilt Tank in the ring. But he flattens one of the flashiest pugs in the business. Sure, I admit, it looks suspicious. Fifteen minutes after the upset, one of the biggest fixers in the game walks into my boy's dressing-room ... But don't forget, I'm the best trainer in the business. I take a chunk of worn out fighting machine and make it over into something that buys me bread and coffee. So maybe I create a freak. How do I know? Maybe I twisted a wire wrong, and my Tank's the toughest thing punching."

"You're trying to tell me that fight was on the level, is that it?"

"So far as I'm concerned, it's level. So far as you're concerned...." Charlie Jingle shrugged.

"How is it you happened to have your boy handy when the other fighter couldn't go on?" asked the Commissioner.

"I got my stable a block away from the arena. When I heard about Kid Congo getting smashed up in an auto accident, I called the arena. Before the fight, I had twelve cents in my pocket, a dime of which I used to call the arena. They told me 'Sure, bring him down quick, Charlie'. So there I was...."

"So they put your Tank in against the Contender. Just like that?"

Jingle snapped his fingers.

"Like that."

"And Harry Belok had nothing to do with the upset?"

"Ask Harry Belok."

"Why did he come to see you when the fight was over?"

Charlie Jingle laughed.

"He come to pay me off...."

The Commissioner looked at a sheet of paper on the table in front of him.

"Nineteen thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars worth of pay-off?"

Charlie Jingle nodded.

"And thirteen cents. You got the thirteen cents down?"

"I've got the thirteen cents down. But how come he pays off so much money to somebody's completely broke, Charlie-boy?"

"Easy," said Charlie Jingle. "The Tank's end of the purse is four hundred bucks, win or lose. Before the fight, I bet the Tank's end against Harry, at house odds. You figure it up, and see if it don't figure out to the penny."

Charlie watched one of the Commissioners scribble quick numbers on a piece of blank paper. In a moment the man looked up, and handed the sheet across to Commissioner Jergen. Jergen looked at it quickly and grunted.

"Okay?" asked Charlie Jingle.

"Okay," growled Jergen.

"When we fight the Champ, I'll send a couple tickets around free. See ya'...." Charlie Jingle went out.

Charlie Jingle came out of the underground tubes and walked down a block of chipped brick and colored plastic buildings, past picket fences and an empty street. He looked at the street, the pavement—dark, quiet, uncluttered by garbage, devoid of kids. On the roofs of the buildings was a jungle of neatly bent, squarely twisted, staunchly mounted aerials. The kids were under them, behind the picket fences, watching five-foot-square screens that flashed stories and news and the life histories of ring heroes like himself. A nice, clean-cut, handsome actor would act the part of Charlie Jingle, his fights, loves and disappointments, all ending up in one glorious, stirring message. Charlie Jingle made it. From rags to riches in a single swipe.... So can you .

He stopped in front of Hannigan's Gym, looked up and down the street, and cautiously spat into the gutter. Then he went past the swinging doors into the building's interior.

Inside the door, he breathed deep the stale smell of oil and leather that permeated the atmosphere. Opening his eyes, he looked into the flat, grinning face of Emil McPhay. McPhay had been chalking schedules on a blackboard when he spotted the rapt expression of Charlie Jingle's face.

"As I live and panhandle!" exclaimed McPhay, his eyes rolling in their fat sockets.

"Anybody to see me, Emil?"

"Well you know as well as me somebody is, Charlie. The lovin' picture-makin' people 're here. Got a whole staff wit 'em." He leaned close, rolling his eyes shyly. "You gonna give 'em the story of yer bloody life, Charlie?"

Charlie strode toward his shop at the back of the gym.

"Not unless they make me lead man. And you the leading lady!"

He went past a row of smoked-glass doors to the last one with C. JINGLE, TRAINER printed on it, opened it, and went in. As Emil McPhay had said, the room was mobbed with smoking, suntanned Californians. An elegant-looking man rushed forward and jerked his hand up and down.

"Glad ... so glad.... Pictures.... Hope.... Contract.... Of course. Your boy.... Mister Jingle.... Famous...."

Nobody had called Charlie Jingle mister for ten years. In one night, he'd graduated from flop to mister. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the sweat on them. His eyes took in the walls painted their flat, drying green, the racks of tools on them, the pictures of great fighting machines all over them, the electrical diagrams, the Reflex-Analyses Patterns mapped out next to each one. Then he lowered his eyes to take in the grinning, smooth-faced men around him, doing nervous things with their faces and hands. He looked at the man in front of him, his mouth flapping open and closed, contorting this way and that, and suddenly Charlie shut his eyes tight, drew in a blast of air, screwed his mouth open, and yelled "Shaddap!" good and loud.

There was stunned silence. Charlie looked around at them, at their poised, waiting faces.

"Scram!" he yelled, and jerked his finger to the door.

Slowly, the suntanned Californians drifted out of the room, watching him closely lest he maul them or loose another violation of the success story at them. One man broke the spell.

"Of course, Mister Jingle, one's life history is certainly something to be treasured. Not to be treated lightly. But I assure you we—my company, that is—we will make certain that we adhere to the facts, in our fashion. There will be no unnec—"

Charlie Jingle grabbed the man's jacket-front with his left hand, his trouser-seat with the other, and, taking advantage of the man's total unpreparedness, threw him bodily out of the room, in the same motion kicking the door shut so hard, the glass cracked and a piece jumped out of the upper left hand corner.

Then Charlie Jingle stormed into his shop, where Tanker Bell awaited him.

When Tanker saw Charlie come into the room fuming mad, he shut off the reflex-machine and turned to watch him. Charlie Jingle paced back and forth in the room, in the small space between work-bench and wall. Suddenly he stopped, spun savagely to face Tanker. "Well? What the hell you lookin' at?"

Tanker Bell grinned. "You, Charlie. I like to watch you when you're mad."

"You do, eh?"

Tanker watched the rage build up to a good healthy flush on Charlie's skin.

"Jeez," Tanker jibed, "you look as red as those beets they sell over in the Old-Methods Market."

"Listen you! Just because you dropped that flashy character last night. Don't let it go to your head! You get me sore, by God, I'll have you piled up in the yard along with yesterday's rusty pugs!"

Tanker laughed.

Charlie Jingle glared at the Tanker a moment, drew a deep breath, snorted it out, and paced twice. Then he faced the Tanker again.

"Sorry, kid. They got me goin' today. First the fight commission. Then these soap-peddlers from Hollywood. Sorry I blew off."

"How'd it go with the Commission?"

"Okay, okay. Jergen knows about me. He's just hungry for a bust, you know? Wants to nail the Fixers."

The Tanker took a step toward Charlie.

"The Champ call?" he asked, voice trembling. Charlie shook his head in the negative.

"Why don't you sucker him, Charlie? Force his hand!"

"You want a bout with the Champ?"

"Sure! Don't you?"

Charlie sat down on the work-bench and pulled the Tanker down next to him.

"Listen, Tank. Last night was a freak, you understand? Something happened last night, I don't know what. But you ain't the boy to fight the Champ—My God, boy, you're older than me!"

Tanker Bell looked at Charlie, his face puckering like a child's.

"No, now wait. Lemme make it clear, Tank," said Charlie Jingle softly. "You'n me been together fourteen years. We've fought in some pretty ancient Tank-towns. We've fought young and old alike, and you know as well as me that it was always an even toss whether or not you would get knocked cold. We're mediocrities, Kid. When I bought you, you'd already seen your best days. Am I right?" Tanker Bell nodded, his head down on his chest.

"Look, Tanker, I ain't tryin' to hurt you. I just don't wanna see you get killed!"

"Well who said anything about gettin' killed, for God's sake!" bawled the Tanker.

"Look at it this way. You've been knocked to pieces a dozen times, and I've gone to work and put you back together a dozen times. I've twisted your wires, re-shaped your reflex plan, doubled your flexibility and your punch-power, co-ordinated and re-co-ordinated you and re-analyzed your nervous-pattern until I've exhausted every possible combination. You're a fighting machine, and a good one, kid. But machines grow old. They get outdated, like me. I'm a Mechanical Engineer. Okay! There's lots of new stuff I don't know that these college kids know. What happens to them? They go to work for Pugilists Inc., inventing new machines with new systems. They got systems that I never dreamed of. Do you know that?"

"Well what's that got to do with me fightin' the Champ, for God's sake?"

"Everything! They put machines in the ring now that are worth Five Hundred Thousand dollars! They're almost indestructible!"

"How come that punk I fought last night wasn't so indestructible, then? How come about that, Charlie?"

"I dunno, I dunno. Somethin' musta gone wrong. Maybe he shorted out."

"Or maybe for once you hit the right combination, how about that, Charlie? Maybe I'm real ripe, now, after all these years of tankin' around!"

"But Tanker! Use your head! The Champ's brand new, spankin' young. He's the newest-styled fighting machine in existence. What chance you think we stand against that?"

"Listen. I fought that bum last night with ease, you know that? There I was, just glidin' around him, punchin' him at will—"

"Maybe it was an accident! Maybe somethin' went wrong with his system last night...."

"And maybe I dropped him on the square, too...."

"OKAY!" shouted Charlie Jingle in desperation. "Maybe you did. And maybe, if you go in against the Champ, maybe he'll kill you! Maybe he'll smash you so hard I won't be able to put you together again. You wanna take that chance? Or you wanna settle down nice and quiet in some Pug factory, supervisin' young fighters?"

"Naw!" yelled the Tanker. "I wanna take that chance! I want you to get me a fight with the Champ!"

"Are you dumb, or what? Don't you know they never come back?"

"All I know is this," began the Tanker. "Fourteen years we bin together. Fourteen years you stuck it out and starved it out, workin' with scraps from a junk-heap, with stumble-bums like me who've seen their day. There was times when you went hungry because the junk-heap needed oil, or wiring, or a pattern-analysis, or parts. Now you got something! Now you can be on top! You know damn well you don't want any part of that Hollywood fiasco. You got a crack at big money. You gonna let it go by-the-by because you're afraid a pile of wires might get killed? Naw! We fight, and that's the way it stacks!"

"You mean it, don't you, Tanker?"

The Tanker said nothing.

Charlie Jingle slowly rose, tired in his bones, tired in his joints. "Okay. I'll arrange it. But don't blame me if—"

"I won't," said Tanker Bell tightly, and Charlie went out. In the hall, the Hollywood people were still waiting for him. Charlie shouldered past them with a half-spring to his step.

He sat in the waiting-room of the offices of Pugilists, Inc., on a plush powder-blue lounge chair chewing gum languidly. From time to time he shot a glance at the secretary sitting inside a totally enclosed desk, operating a Mento-Writer Machine, the electrical contact-buttons fixed to her temples. He watched in sleepy fascination as, every so often, she leaned over and pushed the button marked corrector , and there would follow an electrical hiss as the tape on the machine slid back, eliminating wrongly-formed thoughts.

Charlie knew that somewhere in the room there was machinery observing him, measuring his pulse, emotional balance, probable intelligence, habits, and massing and digesting the general information so that Pugilists, Inc., would know what kind of man they were dealing with, and what approach would be best.

Somewhere in this building another machine was probably purring, feeding information from memory-banks, relating all known facts and incidents regarding Charlie Jingle, his birth, environment, social and political connections, moral status, business ethics, and bank account.... Not that Charlie Jingle was so important to them, this he knew. But Pugilists, Inc., kept records and histories of every and any individual having even the remotest connection with the fight game.

As Charlie Jingle sat there a smile twitched across his face. Let them figure that out, he thought, and then sank into a reverie. Over in the other part of the room, across the prairie of rug, the secretary Mento wrote efficiently, the machine going ZZZ CLK SSHHHH CLK CLK ZZZZ, hypnotic in it's well-oiled quietness.

"Jingle?"

Charlie Jingle looked across the room to the secretary. "What?" he asked.

"Would you go in please, Mister Jingle?"

Charlie followed the direction of the girl's gesture to a panel in the wall. He got up and started to cross suspiciously toward it. As he slowed down, nearing it, he looked back at her, and she smiled and encouraged him on sympathetically toward the doorless wall. Just as Charlie thought It'd be funny if I break my nose on that goddam wall ... the panel swung in quietly.

Charlie walked through it into a room. In it there was another veldt of rug, at the far end of which was a bar, a lounge chair, a tremendous sofa, and a low, knee-high table. The walls were decorated with modern paintings in a colorful, tasteful, executive way. Standing near the knee-high table were three men, one distinguished looking, the other two looking as if they'd stepped out of a Young Collegiate Magazine ad.

The elegant one crossed to Charlie, his face a big, pleasant, well-groomed smile, hand extended.

"Allow me, Mister Jingle. I'm Kort Gassel. These two gentlemen are Jerome Rupp and Eugene White. Would you like a drink, Mister Jingle?"

Charlie Jingle shook their hands and sat down, crossing his legs comfortably.

"You got gin, Mister ahhh—"

"Gassel," said Kort Gassel, and crossed the three feet to the bar. "Soda?" he asked.

"Straight," said Charlie Jingle, and watched the other two sit down slowly as Gassel came back with his drink.

"That's quite a drink. I know few men who enjoy straight gin, Mister Jingle. It always comes as a surprise when I—"

"You gonna give us the fight, Mister Gassel?" interrupted Charlie.

"The fight? You mean with Iron-Man Pugg?"

"That's right, with Iron-Man Pugg."

"Well Mister Jingle. Since you put the matter so straightforwardly. Pugilists Incorporated only owns a small block of stock in Iron-Man Pugg, as you know. Mister Rupp and Mister White here represent the other interests involved. As you must know, Pugilists Incorporated is a large-scale business, designed to function on a large-scale basis. Now, we, the stockholders in Iron-Man Pugg, have thought this thing out. We've come to the conclusion that it would rather—well, embarrass the Company to agree to such a match as you propose."

"So you won't fight?"

"No, no, Mister Jingle, don't jump to hasty conclusions. I'm trying to explain something to you. It's not simply a matter of matching your—ah—boy against ours. But we are concerned with the overall effect of such a bout. Frankly, our reputation as a manufacturing concern is more important to us than the outcome of any single bout—"

"Whadda you say you get to the point?"

"Certainly. Tanker Bell, as we understand it, has a fighting history of forty-seven years. Now, I'm afraid we'd be made a laughing-stock if Tanker Bell were set into motion against one of our products."

"Especially if he won, is that it?"

"Particularly then. But we rest secure in the fact that that outcome is highly improbable, not to state impossible."

Charlie Jingle sipped his gin, looking from one face to the other.

"So?" he asked, anticipating what was about to come.

"Suppose, Mister Jingle, you were offered a price for Tanker Bell, price far in excess of his actual worth. A price big enough to even make it possible for you to perhaps buy a second-rate fighter in good second-class condition."

Charlie Jingle closed his eyes and tapped his foot with horny, grease-monkey fingers. In a moment he opened them and slowly took in the three representatives of the champ, Iron-Man Pugg.

"Lemme get this straight. You want me to sell Tanker for much more than he's worth because you'd be humiliated at having to put one of your products in the same ring with him?"

"Exactly," said Kort Gassel.

"But you're sure your boy'd whip him in the ring?"

"Well obviously we all know the knockout victory he scored over the Contender was an accident."

Charlie Jingle nodded.

" We all know it. But there's one guy in the world who don't. You know who? Tanker Bell himself."

Kort Gassel laughed.

"A robot, Mister Jingle? Surely you must be—"

Charlie Jingle shook his head.

"Can't do it, boys. I gotta consider the Tanker. You see, Mister Gassel, Tanker thinks he could take your boy. And not only does he wanna take him, but he won't take no for an answer!"

"Listen, Jingle, is this some kind of joke? What are you holding out for? A price? When I said I'd make it worth your—"

Charlie Jingle shook his head, stubbornly and firmly.

"No price, Gassel. Just an agreement-contract."

"Listen, you fool, don't you realize what's at stake here? We're big business! We can't afford to play around with lucky independents like you!"

"Can't take any chances, huh?"

"Exactly that! Can't, and won't!"

"Wanna bet?"

"If you try to—"

Charlie Jingle got up from his seat.

"Gassel ... I've been in this racket so long I've got oil in my veins instead of blood, and a Reflex-Pattern Analysis for a brain. I know every angle there is to know. If I want a fight, I'll get one. So don't go try putting your big business pressure on me. I'm too old for college-boy antics."

Kort Gassel stared at him for a long, hostile moment. Then his face broke into a smile.

"My friend, do you know what you're bucking? These are the offices of Pugilists Incorporated you're in. Don't you realize what that means?"

"Sure," said Charlie Jingle. "It means that if Tanker Bell whips Iron-Man Pugg, Charlie Jingle will one day have as big a factory and as many orders for Fighting-Machines as Pug, Inc...."

Charlie Jingle crossed the desert of rug toward the exit-panel.

"See you at Ring-side, Kids." And he went out.

Mischa Hannigan, owner and proprietor of Hannigan's Jungle, watched from his tiered office as Hammerhead Johnny put Tanker Bell through his paces in the ring. His eyes travelled from the laboring fighters in the ring to the crowd of spectators standing and sitting around, watching the Tank work. He was smooth and fast, without a kink, stabbing light quick jabs and those murderous body-rights that had stopped the Contender, breaking, the press had said after the fight, the metal rib-cage inside the Contender's body. Mischa Hannigan was happy.

After fifteen years of obscurity, his gym was fast-becoming popular again. He had begun to charge admissions again to fans and promoters who were eager to see the Tank at work. Once again during the afternoon workouts there was the hum and roar of spectators, the slap-slur of springing feet on the canvas followed by the booming of fists echoing from rib-cage and jaw-bone structure. There was the smell of money in his gym now, along with the smells of leather and oil.

The door behind him opened and Hannigan turned to Charlie Jingle.

"'Lo, Charlie."

"'Lo, Mish.... How's he look?"

"Terrific! If I didn't know him for twenty years, I'd swear he was brand, spankin' new!"

Charlie Jingle grunted quietly and walked to the plate-glass window. He looked down at them there in the white-roped square, watched the Tanker attack with a quick-reflex attack, block a flurry of counter-blows, weave under a right-hand smash to the head, and rock Hammerhead Johnny to the ropes with a combination of shoulder-straight jabs to the stomach and a cross-hand right to the chest. A hum of approval and amazement went up from the spectators.

"Charlie!" shrieked Mischa Hannigan. "Charlie, did you see that? And that Hammerhead Johnny is supposed to be the most stable Pug in the business. They say he's got magnets in his feet, can't nobody break the contact of—"

"Calm down, calm down, it's only practice."

"Practice he calls it! If Hammerhead could bust up the Tank, don't you think he would?"

"Hammerhead's an old junkpot, Mich, and you know it!"

"Old he may be, Charlie, but junkpot he's not. Crafty as a damn president of Pugs, Inc., he is, and everybody in the business knows it. He ranks with the best sparrin' partners in the world, he does."

In the ring below something happened that drew a roar of uncontrollable excitement from the crowd. It was over in a flash and nobody saw quite how it happened. Hammerhead Johnny's body described a rigid, dark arc in the air, hovered suspended a second in a completely horizontal position, and then crashed with a hollow boom to the deck. The Hammerhead did not move.

"BEGREE!" howled the delighted Mischa Hannigan. "BEGREE, he's knocked him cold!" He began to dance around the room in a jig that shook his frame with every jolt and pirouette. Charlie Jingle laughed.

"I'll be dammed! The Tank's really got it! He really has got it!"

"Oh, we're rich, we're rich, we're rich!" chanted the hysterical Hannigan, dancing his macabre dance of the human puff-ball. There was a knock at the door and Hannigan, still chanting, danced to the door and opened it. The relaxed puffy flesh drew tight, his back stiffened. Charlie Jingle peered around his girth to see who stood there.

Harry Belok, in a black Homburg and a blue pin-stripe suit, stepped smiling into the room, twirling an ebony cane. He doffed his hat, bowing slightly. Behind him a small man slid in next to the wall, his whole body screwed up tightly into his neck. Hannigan, with a pale, sickly smile, shut the door.

"If it ain't Harry Belok! Hello, Harry."

Harry Belok, smiling, looked straight at Charlie Jingle. "Whadayasay, Hannigan! How's things, Charlie? Long time no see, hah?"

Charlie Jingle, with a tightness in his throat, mirrored the sick expression of Mischa Hannigan. He smiled a smile so forced his flesh stretched like a rubber mask out of control.

"Hello, Harry. What can I do for you?"

"'S this way, Charlie-mo. I just seen your boy work out. I just seen him club the Hammerhead to the deck with the weirdest combination I ever seen. It's somethin' new, he's got. Somethin' original! Know what I mean?" Harry Belok stopped pacing, stopped twirling, to look at Charlie Jingle. Charlie Jingle waited.

"Well—I hear around the grapevine that Pugs, Inc., don't relish the thought of givin' your boy a crack at Iron-Man. Is that true, Charlie-mo?"

Charlie Jingle shrugged.

"It don't mean a thing, Harry. You know that as well as anybody."

"Yeah, Charlie-mo. But you know as well as anybody that the Fight Commission has got a rules book as thick as this room. If Pugs, Inc., really wants to, they'll find some kinda statute that disqualifies your boy for the championship. Now, you don't want that to happen, do you?"

Charlie Jingle began to feel the heat flushing up behind his eyeballs. "What's the pitch, Harry?"

"I think maybe what you ought to do, Charlie-mo, is lemme buy a chunk out of your boy. Then I guarantee you get the match."

"What makes you think I don't get the match anyway, Harry?"

Harry Belok turned, pointing his stick through the glass to the gym.

"Look down there. You see any reporters there? You see any cameras shootin'?"

Charlie Jingle did not move, keeping his eyes unblinking on Belok.

"Okay. There's no reporters. No press build-up. Pugs, Inc., has put the freeze on. So? What's the point?"

"The point," said Harry Belok, tapping Charlie Jingle's chest with the white-tipped stick, "the point, is that you don't get no match from Iron-Man unless you play ball with me!"

Charlie Jingle squinted at him through a cloud of brown-blue smoke. "Can't do it, Harry-mo," he said quietly.

"You serious?"

"Dead serious," said Charlie Jingle.

"You get too serious, that's the way you liable to wind up," said Harry Belok through his teeth. He turned and stomped toward the door and went out. The little man against the wall slid out after him.

Charlie Jingle walked nonchalantly to the door, hooked his foot behind it, and kicked it shut with a loud slam. Mischa Hannigan took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his brow.

"You've gone crazy, Charlie. You've gone stark ravin' mad!"

Charlie Jingle whirled.

"All these years, Mish, I starved and sweated in tank-joints. All these years I broke my back, and nobody lifted a finger except a choice one or two. Now I've got a crack at somethin' good and everybody wants in. Well I don't want them in! I want them to stay clear, and lemme go my own way! Is that crazy?"

"But Charlie," moaned Mischa Hannigan. "You can't go laughin' at the Fixer like that! Don't you have enough worries without gettin' killed?"

Charlie Jingle looked at him a blank moment and then laughed. He turned, looking toward the ring below. The Tanker was on the Gym floor, looking up. He waved. Charlie turned to Hannigan.

"Can you get me the Jawbreaker to spar with Tanker, Mish?"

Hannigan sank slowly into his leather chair behind the beat-up, rusting metal desk. He rubbed a patch of rust with his thumb.

"Sure. Sure I can get the Jawbreaker. Can you get the match?"

"You just watch my dust," said Charlie, and went out.

Mischa Hannigan crinkled his nose. He began to feel his asthma coming on.

"Are you crazy, Jingle?" roared the apoplectic Commissioner Jergen. "I can't get myself wrapped up in ring politics! I'm a fight commissioner, not a goddam promoter!"

Charlie took a few steps toward the Commissioner, leveling a finger at him in indictment.

"Now you lemme tell you somethin'. You run the fight game, but the only thing you're interested in is your own goddam reputation. The only time you ever get up off your fat keister is when somebody publicly pulls a quick deal that looks phony. Then you roar up from the saddle and start screaming 'foul'— only because it makes you look bad if you don't!"

"I can have you cited for contempt—"

"I don't give one damn in hell what you can have me cited for! I thought you were one square guy. But all you are is a bloody politician like all the others! You're here to make sure the fight racket gets a fair-deal. Well I'm getting the old freeze-away, and you still sit on your keister and don't do a damned thing!"

"You damn midget!" croaked the Commissioner, and Charlie Jingle whirled, fists cocked, his face working up a nice purple color. "What'd you call me, Fatso?"

"I called you a damn midget, and if you don't like it, I dare you take a poke at me!" said the Commissioner, and coming around his desk he thrust his jaw out toward Charlie Jingle's cocked fists.

Jingle drew his fist back and stopped. Slowly he dropped the cocked hand by his side.

"Oh, no! Oh, no you don't! You'd just love me to do it, wouldn't you? A half-hour later I'd lose my license for conduct unbecoming a fight trainer."

The Commissioner straightened up slowly, glaring out from under thick grey eyebrows at Charlie Jingle's face.

"You think I'd pull that ?"

"Goddam right you'd pull it! For all I know, you may even be working for Pugs, Inc."

Fight Commissioner Jergen rocked back on his heels as if he had just taken a blow between the eyes. He sank slowly into his chair, staring in stillborn amazement at Charlie Jingle.

"Wait a minute, Charlie. You mean to say—Listen, boy, what's happening to you? You know better than to say something like that to me!"

Charlie Jingle suddenly felt a hollowness in his stomach.

"I'm sorry, Jergen. I don't know what's the matter with me. This thing's got me sore. They got me goin', and there's nothin' I can do about it. I called the press. I told them that Pugs, Inc. and Tanker Bell had come to an agreement. I even quoted a fight date. I look in the papers the next day. Nothing! They got me sewed up tight. I come here as a last resort.... I'm sorry I shot off my mouth!"

Charlie Jingle turned and started out.

"Now wait a minute, Charlie...." Charlie Jingle turned. "You see, I know all about these kinds of deals in the game. Have known about them for years. But they keep me shut out because I can't prove anything. If you go to court as a witness, Pugs, Inc. will have fifteen other witnesses. They'll even have a taped recording of your conversation with them, which they juggle and splice to fit their purposes. You'll hear things coming off a tape which you damn well know you didn't say or mean. But you'll have to admit it's your voice; you were there, the other guys in the room were there—and they got you nailed. See what I mean? They're big business. They got it sewed."

"You mean there's nothing to do?"

"I mean there are ways. All you've got to do is sneak yourself into the public eye. Once that happens, the public asks questions. What happened to Tanker Bell? Why isn't he fighting the Champ? Know what I mean?"

"Don't you think they're askin' questions now?"

"Sure. But they ain't doin' it en masse. See?"

"Yeah," said Charlie Jingle softly. "Yeah. What I gotta do is hit Pugs, Inc. where they ain't got control of the situation. Where they don't have their stooges workin' to keep things quiet."

"Now you've got it," said the Commissioner, grinning.

"Okay. See you around," said Charlie, and started out.

"Take care," warned the Commissioner. But by that time Charlie Jingle was on his way.

At one o'clock of that afternoon, Charlie Jingle boarded a coast-to-coast rocket. Fifty-five minutes later, at ten fifty-five A.M. West Coast Time, Charlie Jingle set foot on the pavement of Los Angeles' Municipal Rocket-Port, hopped a cab, and got out on the lot of Galaxy Films. His business there took him two hours and twelve minutes, by which time he hopped another cab, was born back to the Rocket-Port, and bought a return ticket on the eastbound Rocket, scheduled for takeoff at five P.M.

Charlie found a few hours on his hands. He chose to divert himself at the Jet-Car Races in Culver City. He dropped forty dollars on the first two races, and had just bought another ticket when, as he walked away from the betting window, he saw a familiar profile marking possibilities on a racing sheet with a well-chewed pencil. He nudged up to Rabbit Markey, and in a half-whisper, asked:

"Got anything hot today, Jack?"

Rabbit Markey looked up with an annoyed frown, blinked, and when Charlie Jingle's face registered, laughed.

"'Lo, Charlie? How's things out on the Coast?"

"Things," said Charlie, shaking his hand, "are lousy. But they'll get better real fast. How about you, Rabbit? Out of the fights for good?"

Rabbit Markey sighed slow and long, nodding his head.

"I dumped my whole stable, Charlie, and when I come out here, I figured Jet-Car racing was a clean way to make a buck. So I bought me a Jet outfit. But it's the same tie-up as the fights was."

"I can imagine," said Charlie Jingle.

"No you can't, neither. For instance, you know who Jet-Cars Incorporated happens to be an affiliate of?"

"Wait! Don't tell me. Lemme guess." Charlie shut his eyes. "Pugs, Inc.?"

"Bingo," said Rabbit Markey dispiritedly. "You know who makes the drivers for the Jet-Cars?"

"Wait! Don't tell me!... Pugs, Inc.?"

"Bingo," said Rabbit Markey sadly, and Charlie laughed.

"That's the way the bugle blows, eh, Rabbit?"

"You know who's got the Commissioner of Jet-Car Races bought out?" went on Rabbit Markey.

"Wait! Don't tell—How do you know that, Rabbit?"

"Whatsa difference. I know. For sure! I happened to find out. Just like the old Fights Racket, eh, Charlie?"

"Yeah," said Charlie Jingle nervously. "Except that nobody's got Jergen bought out."

"Hunh?" exclaimed Rabbit Markey.

"What I said—nobody's got—"

"I heard ya, Charlie. I heard ya the first time. You mean you never heard about Jergen?"

"Heard? Heard what?"

"Boyo boyo boy! Buddy, you are in the middle of the neatest fix in history. You mean to say you don't know what's happening?"

"Fix? What kinda fix, Rabbit?... Are you kidding? I can't even get my boy a fight, and you're talking fix!"

"Aw Boyy! Awww Boyyyy are you a dummy! Lissen! Whatta you doin' out here onna Coast?"

"Doin'? I'm tryin' to set it up so I can get Tanker a fight, that's what I'm doin'!"

"You worked out a deal with some film company, huh?"

"That's right. Why?"

Rabbit Markey shot a glance to the right of him and one to the left, hunched his shoulders, pulled his trousers up, took Charlie by the lapel, and drew him close to a post. The buzzer sounded outside to announce that the race was within one minute of starting time.

"Charlie, you're about to be had. Now you're playin' it the way you was supposed to in the beginning. You was supposed to play ball with the Hollywood boys to begin with. Now you done it. Now the fix is in!"

"How the the hell can there be a goddam FIX?" screeched Charlie Jingle. "Tanker's level. Are you kiddin'?"

"Sure! Tanker's level! But how about the Contender? How about Hammerhead Johnny? How about Steamroller Jones?"

"You're crazy!" shouted Charlie Jingle. "It can't be! How the hell would you know?"

"You wanna know how I know? My daughter Marie—you remember her, she was a kid when you seen her—she's a secretary to Mike Bretz, the East Coast Assistant Vice of Pugs, Inc.... She's got the whole map out, from the word go. Pugs, Inc. is puttin' things in your way so that everybody thinks you got a real thing in the Tank. They're helpin' you get a build-up, you see, as if they wanted to freeze you out. When you finally break through the freeze-out one way or the other, they're gonna have one hellofa drawing-card! Get it now, Charlie?"

Charlie Jingle walked away from Rabbit Markey, went some twenty paces, kicked a dent in a refuse-chute, and walked back.

"I don't believe it!" whispered Charlie Jingle hoarsely. "I don't believe it!"

The bugle blew outside. Rabbit Markey looked at Charlie, looked at his ticket, and started toward the race-track.

Charlie Jingle caught his arm.

"Wait a minute, Rabbit."

Rabbit Markey shook his head.

"I already said enough to float me in blood, Charlie. Now lemme go and watch the bloody no-good fixed races."

"No, Rabbit. Tell me more. Tell me who else is swingin' this deal?"

"Don't you know?"

"Harry Belok?"

Rabbit Markey nodded.

"Jergen?" asked Charlie Jingle with bated breath.

Rabbit Markey nodded his head.

"How they do it? Tinker with the Fighters?"

"You ever see Hammerhead get knocked off his feet?"

"I don't get it—they lemme buy my own way into the news, is that it? I think I'm perfectly legitimate. So does everybody else in the game. What then?"

"Then a story breaks someplace about the way Pugs, Inc. tried not to give you a fight. Everything looks like Pugs, Inc. is scared stiff of you because you can ruin them. Big build-up. Even Jergen goes to bat, confesses he tried to help you get the fight. Everybody's sore as hell at Pugs, Inc. They force a fight, Tanker goes in—and gets slaughtered. See?"

Charlie Jingle felt his guts deflate in a rush.

"Yeah," he said, dead-toned. "I see."

"What you gonna do?"

"I dunno. I got it set up with Galaxy Films to be waitin' in New York Rocket-Port with cameras. Couple of friends of mine are gonna fake a shootin' with me when I get there. Guess I've got no choice. I'll have to go through with it now."

"Okay now," said Rabbit Markey. "Now lemme go and get ulcers over the cars." He gave Charlie his hand and they shook slowly.

"Take care, kid—and thanks."

"Nahhh! Forget it! Forget you even saw me here! But don't forget what I told you. Harry Belok's got friends in LA, too. I got racing-ulcers, but I don't mind bein' alive with them. You get me?"

Charlie Jingle nodded again, and Rabbit Markey walked out into the roar of the Jet-Races. Charlie Jingle looked down at the ticket in his hand, ripped it in two, and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

Outside, he hailed a cab.

To board the Eastbound Rocket would have been to play into the very hands of his enemies. And he needed time to think—to figure his way out of the fix that had been planned for him. Perhaps by avoiding the Rocket trip, he would avoid the pre-planned shooting, the filming of which was also pre-set, and so avoid the press, and whatever consequent notoriety would follow the whole affair at the Rocket-Port.

So he hired a car and started to drive East.

There arose a great hue and cry at the disappearance of Charles Jingle, who had been a registered, scheduled passenger on the Eastbound Rocket. What had happened to him? What mystery cloaked his disappearance? Galaxy Films made it known that Charles Jingle suspected an attempt on his life. Why? asked a conscientious columnist. Who might have reason enough to threaten the life of a Robot-Trainer? Mischa Hannigan, innocently and in a moment of anger at what he thought must be vengeful murder, stated that attempts had been made to intimidate Charles Jingle into selling out Tanker Bell. Who had done so? Mischa Hannigan would not say, though hinting darkly that a "well-known fixer" was at the bottom of it.

The Press probed deeper into the mystery. What about Charles Jingle's property, Tanker Bell? Was it so valuable that the proprietor should be murdered for not parting with it? If it was, why had there been no offer of a match from the Champion?

It was then that some bright reporter conceived the idea of questioning the Fight Commission as to its views on the shamefully clandestine affair. What had it to say? Nothing, was the reply. The bright reporter launched an attack on the Commission. The fight public wanted to know what the Fight Commission thought its function was, if not to expose underground tactics in the game?

Commissioner Jergen addressed the citizenry via television. He admitted that Charles Jingle had been to see him. He admitted he was unable to move due to a lack of tangible evidence. He would not name the parties accused by Charles Jingle because there was no real evidence at this date. He would further investigate the situation, using every resource at his command.

When Charlie Jingle arrived in New York two days later the lid was off the town. Everyone was fuming at what had been perpetrated against him. Everyone understood why he had come into town unobtrusively.

What Charlie Jingle had sought to avoid had happened anyway. The play was in motion. There was no stopping it.

He watched the day-to-day developments in a state of paralyzed horror. It was a nightmare in which he was the principal, and yet, the bystander, the spectator. He had no choice but to follow. Rabbit Markey had shown him the truth, so that all things now had a double meaning, a reality and an unreality, another dimension, another depth.

When the press came to question him, Charlie fought the only way he knew. He denounced Pugs, Inc. as cheats, liars, and fixers. He denounced Commissioner Jergen, Harry Belok, the press, the Hollywood people, the prize-fight game, and the public in an attempt to break the whole business wide open.

But everyone understood.

"Mister Jingle is justified in his bitterness," said a reporter.

"Of course Charlie's sore. He's got a right to be sore!" said Commissioner Jergen.

"A horrible injustice. We were concerned over our reputation," said Kort Gassel of Pugs, Inc.

"The guy deserves a break!" said the fight public.

And Hollywood said, "We don't understand what prompted this unwarranted attack."

So there it was. Charlie Jingle spoke the truth, but nobody believed him. Tanker Bell was granted a match. The fix was in.

As a last resort, Charlie Jingle refused to let the Tanker fight. An uproar went up from the public. It was a matter of ethics. Tanker Bell was now their champion. He was the embodiment of everyman against the Organization, against injustice. Tanker Bell must fight!

It was then that Charlie Jingle understood. This was not simply a fight. This was part of a long-range plan to bring the public man to heel. This was part of a scheme to break the mass-individual spirit, because if Everyman stood with Tanker Bell as the champion of independant justice, and Tanker Bell were beaten—so would the public-independent spirit be.

But Charlie Jingle had his hands tied.

On the day of the fight, Charlie Jingle corralled the Tanker in the workshop and ordered the amazed Tanker to lie down on the work-bench for a "tune up". The Tanker protested.

"You crazy, Charlie? Whuffor? I never felt so good in my life!"

"Don't gimme any arguments, Tank. Stretch out and shuddup."

"But Charlie...."

"Stretch out, for God's sake!"

"What you gonna do?"

"Re-vamp you. I'm gonna run the tapes on the bout with the Contender, and stuff your memory banks with tapes on every fight was ever had with a Pugs, Inc. product. Then I'm gonna run tapes on Hammerhead Johnny. I'm gonna key up your reflex-pattern to the point where you'll be operating so fast your joints are liable to break down in the ring."

Tanker stared at him, open-mouthed. "What for? Will you please tell me that? What for? "

"After I've fed you the tapes on the Contender and Hammerhead, you'll know, if those goddam memory-computers of yours ain't so rusty they can still work."

"You tryin' to teach me somethin' I don't know?"

"That's right."

"Why can't you just tell me?"

"If you figure it out yourself, you won't like it any more than if I told you; but you'll know it the hard way."

"What a hellofa way to teach me somethin'! Jazzin' me up! My co-ordination is perfect, analysis-system is workin' like a voodoo charm, and you wanna jazz me up! It's like committin' suicide!"

Something in the Tanker's face changed, quickly and suddenly, as if a diamond-bright idea exploded inside his steel-plated head.

"Charlie?"

Charlie Jingle looked up from his assortment of tools. "What?"

"Is this a fix?"

Charlie Jingle looked at him, the flush of anger brightening his eyes. "Is that a joke, Tanker?"

"No, Charlie. A question."

"Stretch out," said Charlie Jingle gruffly.

"Answer me first, Charlie. Is it?"

"Whatta you think?"

"I dunno," said the Tanker, stretching out slowly.

"You really wanna win that fight, kid?" asked Charlie Jingle, sad and tender.

"You know I do!"

"Trust me then, hah?"

The Tanker laughed, stretching out on the bench.

The light glittered cold on the smooth worn steel of the tools in Charlie Jingle's hands.

When the first Mechanical Pugilist was made, the Fight Commission made a number of demands. First, through each robot's sight-mechanism, it was established that each machine should be equipped with cameras by which they would record the activity of their opponent in the ring. If a foul was committed which had escaped the judges, the proof would thereby be recorded on the camera-tapes, which could easily be confiscated by the Fight Commission.

Secondly, there was a co-ordination system in each machine which could not be slackened without a noticeable difference in the conduct of the fighter, thus acting as a safeguard against the Trainer-Owner's voluntarily slowing their fighters down for illegal purposes. However, there were ways to slow a pug down. There were circuit-shorting devices, reflex-sabotaging devices, analysis-pattern disturbances, muscle-flexibility tensions—all of which cut down the fighter's efficiency to some degree. The trick, of course, was to do so without exposure, since all fighters were examined moments before they entered the ring, and were subject to further investigation if the Judges deemed a fight suspiciously under expectation-level.

The machines then were constructed, so that, in essence, they were totally 'honest', and every part in them was recorded in a master plan, filed with the Fight Commission, so that nothing could be added, and certainly, nothing be subtracted from them, since their balance depended completely on very essential parts.

They were also constructed so that they had their weakness-points in exactly the same places men had theirs. If a machine struck hard enough and exactly enough on the point of its opponent's jaw, it would jar wires and electrical contacts badly enough to stop its operational function—thus the "knockout".

To all intents and purposes the fighting machine was constructed as much along human lines as was possible, even to the point of corruptibility. They all had a desire to be great fighting machines, and to go down in the annals of fight history. They were, each and every one, made for the purpose of practicing a deadly, brutal art by which men could sublimate the brutality that nested like a sleeping tiger in their own persons. Provision had even been made for the sight of flowing blood. The tough rubber skin that made the robots appear human contained the red oil that lubricated the steel "innards", and if the rubber skin split the more the bloodthirsty members of the audience were satisfied.

What Charlie Jingle did, when he operated on the Tanker, was what might be called, in human terms, "over-conditioning" him. He tightened and sped his reflexes, shortened the length of his wires so that electrical responses had shorter distances to travel, sped up his Analysis-Pattern, hyper-toned his muscle-flexibility, and generally made him a nervous wreck.

Then, as a final touch, he ran the tapes he had promised to run, striving to bring the truth to the Tanker.

"How do you feel?" asked Charlie as he watched Tanker Bell sit up, his face twitching.

"Like a damn screwball!" said the Tanker.

"Did you get the message?"

"Yeah. Hammerhead never fought like the way he fought me in his life! Wha'd they do to him?"

"Fixed him," said Charlie Jingle soberly.

"The Contender too?"

"Well you saw the tapes. They're all stuck away in that memory bank of yours. Whatta you think?"

Tanker nodded, his head jerking up and down uncontrollably.

"Fixed him too. But I don't get the picture yet. Do you, Charlie?"

"Sure, I get it. The night I called the Arena to match you against the Contender because Kid Congo got squashed in that accident, they had a fix workin' between them. Kid Congo was supposed to upset the Contender, see? But they must've both been fixed a little to fool the Judges. So there's this accident, see? This throws the whole plan into a panic—Congo's out, it's too late to un-fix the Contender. If the Auditorium puts in a fighter who's strictly legitimate, everybody will know it was a fixed. I call. They figured I had a Tank, maybe you'd look pretty bad in there, and nobody would know the difference. Okay, what happens? You nail the Contender, because, after all, you ain't that bad—does it figure?"

"Boy! Does it!" said the Tanker, his head jerking. "Why can't you go to the authorities, Charlie?"

"Because this fix is piled a mile high, Tanker, in all directions."

"Whadda you mean?"

"I mean I can't go to the Commission."

"What we gonna do? Just get belted around?"

"We got no choice," said Charlie Jingle with a shrug.

"The hell we ain't! If you think I'm gonna go into a ring and get mauled, you're off your rocker!"

"We can't call the bout off," said Charlie Jingle dejectedly.

"Well who said anything about callin' it off?" shouted Tanker.

"I did the best I could! I tuned you up. I timed you. I jazzed you up good—"

"But you still don't think we can beat that Iron-Man Pugg!"

"That's right."

"So whattam I supposed to do when I go inter the ring tonight? Throw down my hands and give it up?"

"You do what I did. Do your best."

"Alla while knowin' I don't stand a chance?"

"If I did it, you can do it."

"You know what you don't have, Charlie? You don't have faith!"

Charlie Jingle snorted in disgust.

"Who hatched you? Some preacher?"

"No, no, that's the truth, and you know it!"

"The truth," roared Charlie Jingle in a white rage, "The truth is that everything's a lie! The truth is that everything's fixed from the word go, from the bottom up and the top down. That's the goddam truth for you!"

Tanker shook his head stubbornly.

"Boy, you sure are singin' a different song, all of a sudden. I dunno what the hell happened to you, but you don't even sound like yourself!"

"Okay! Okay! Wait and see when they klobber you with it tonight, Tank, my boy! Wait and see when it hits you square between the eyes."

The Tanker leaped up from the bench, jerking his fists in the air uncontrollably.

"I'll murder him!"

"No you won't. Listen, I been fighting against fixes and fixers all my life, Tanker. I never believed, and I never wanted to believe, that they had it sewed away, that the big operators had us tucked away into their pockets. Now I'm convinced! They sold me their dirty bill of goods. I'm sewed in with the rest of them."

The Tanker shook his fist under Charlie Jingle's face. Oil had drained from his system up into his face and head, lubricating his head-mechanisms as protection from strain, as his head-parts were being overworked. His "skin" looked blotchy.

"Charlie! After this is over, I want quits with you! You hear me? I want quits!"

"Suits me fine," said Charlie Jingle.

"I'll bet—" began Tanker Bell, "—I'll bet you ain't even gonna bet on me! Are you?"

"Sure! I'm gonna bet a thousand on you in the open market. Then what I'm gonna do is let Hannigan bet five thousand for me on the sly on the Champ. That way, at least I'll come out with somethin'."

"Even Belok's better than you! At least he's got guts enough to fix fights. You ain't even got guts enough to fight one!"

Charlie Jingle walked to the door.

"You better rest up," he said, and swung the door open.

"Don't worry about me," said the Tanker. "I can take care of myself!"

Charlie Jingle looked at him a moment, a cloud of inexpressible something in his eyes.

"See you later," he said quietly, and shut the door.

Charlie Jingle strode, shoulder to shoulder with Tanker Bell, down the long cluttered corridor of Golum Auditorium toward the roped ring. There swelled, to either side of them, the surging roar of the crowd, and it seemed to Charlie that the sound lifted the bitterness of his expression from his face and floated it forcibly toward the rafters overhead, for all to see, and to know that Charlie Jingle had given up the good fight, Charlie Jingle was tired, had been had, was through, inside and out. The fix was in. There was no way to stop it. That was the way the bugle blew.

They climbed into the ropes and the roar of the crowd boomed and grew, electric with the mood and feel of battle. Swiftly Charlie disrobed the Tank, sat him on a stool, and looked over at the Champion's corner. Iron-Man Pugg was already seated. On his face, as on Tanker's, there was the brooding look of combat, of dead-sure certainty that he, and he alone would win. And Charlie felt a jolt of sick depression in his stomach, because he knew it was true.

The robot-referee came into the ring, and the crowd immediately hushed. A dime-sized microphone on an almost invisible wire dropped down from the batteries of overhead lights (this was more in the line of tradition than need, since the robot-referee had a built-in mike of his own), and the referee held up his hands for complete silence. The crowd shushed itself to a murmer, and the referee went through his introductory piece. After each fighter had received the crowd's roar of approbation, the referee signalled for them to come to the center.

They went back to their corners. Charlie shook the robe from the Tanker's back as a hum of excitement charged through the crowd. The buzzer sounded and the fighters rose, ready. Charlie stepped through the ropes, slapped Tanker on his back.

"Do your best, Tank."

The Tanker looked at him, face grim and solitary, shut away from Charlie.

"My best ain't enough, Charlie. I'll do more than my best."

Charlie Jingle was about to say something else when the bell banged away. He scooped the stool out of the ring and watched the Tanker shuffle into center to meet the Champion.

Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines. Thirty rounds of fighting, at five minutes per round, is one hundred and fifty minutes, two and a half hours, of solid, shattering labor. A machine overheats the way a man does under constant stress. It's joints expand, its lubricant thins, things begin to stick, friction wears parts. While a fight-machine's body works against time, its opponent pounds it, jars it, jolts it. Wires loosen. Gears slip. Tubes shatter. The machine slows, becomes gawky. Its timing is a split second off. Its flexibility, its speed, are worn down.

When its pattern-analysis system becomes damaged, it cannot decipher the feints, the systems and combinations of its opponents' strategy. An eye is shattered, and the Trainer replaces it, since he carries a spare pair. The same one is smashed again, and he cannot replace it, because the Commission only allows a single replacement during a fight. Its "skin" is split and the colored oil flows, the life-blood of the machine. The Trainer is allowed one vulcanizing skin repair job per bout. If it happens again, the fighter must go on, fighting against the time when the loss of oil will endanger his operating efficiency.

Sometimes the machines strike each other with such deadly impact, they dent the inner frame-work of the body, putting strains on a section of wiring or electrical tubing. Then the damaged machine must fight defensively to protect its weakened section. The offender will work out elaborate punch-patterns to trick the defender into somehow thinking he understands the aim of each pattern of punches and where the final concentration will be. And suddenly, with uncanny craftiness, the offender switches its attack to an unexpected area.

This is the function of the pattern-analysis system in each fighter. To map, plan, digest the opponent's habits of fighting, then compute them, set up a given system of punches itself which will clutter the opponent's memory banks, and then radically change the mode of attack and system of fighting. The process is mathematically complex. It is the process of the human brain operating at high speed.

The first fifteen rounds of fighting are generally devoted toward "faking" patterns. Each fighter labors to out-fox the other. In a sense, the first fifteen rounds of fighting are preliminary. They give the fight fans an opportunity to warm up to what is coming. Then it begins. The lightning-fast pace shifts, becomes slower. The fighters seem to be gliding through water. Then one unleashes an attack, sets an impossibly fast pace. The game has started....

Charlie Jingle gripped the edge of the ring hard, digging his hands into the canvas, straining and twisting in tortured anguish with every slashing blow that struck the Tanker. He watched the two fighters weave, jerk, dart—bodies and arms flashing blurs, smashing blows one to the other in sequences that were too complex for the eye to follow in detail. He groaned, cursed, hoped, bellowed, roared and screamed along with two thousand nine hundred and seventy four other human beings in the arena.

The round was the twenty-sixth. This was the stretch. The final, ineradicable stretch. The bell banged away and the fighters parted under the glare of the lights, dancing away from each other to their corners. Charlie shot the stool into the ring and went through the ropes. Tanker dropped like a chunk of hot lead onto the stool.

"How do you feel, boy? How do you feel?" prompted Charlie, pumping the cooling-fluid into Tanker's insides.

"Hot," rasped the Tanker. "Hot as hell."

"Want me to throw in the towel?" asked Charlie, working fast, working the pump up and down quickly.

"No, goddamit. Wrap it around your eyes if you can't take it."

Charlie worked the body, stimulating the free flow of oil through the system.

"How'm I doin'?" asked the Tanker grudgingly.

"Well at least you're still in there."

"By God, Charlie! Fighting Machines ain't supposed to be too emotional, but if anybody gets me sorer than you do so help me, I'll murder him!"

Charlie Jingle worked the body fast, checked the heated joints for too much strain.

"Favor the right. The elbow's gettin' creaky. And save the fight for the Champ. You'll need it."

The buzzer sounded, Charlie shoved his tools through the ropes onto the edge of the deck, climbed out, and holding onto the edge of the stool, he said, "Watch his Three-Six combo. He's gonna angle for your jaw pretty soon."

Tanker turned, looking down at him.

"You don't trust me at all, do you?"

The bell banged and quickly Tanker was on his feet, moving in his curious, side-long motion.

By the end of the twenty-seventh, Tanker came back to his corner lame. The Champ had dented his forehead.

"How is it?" asked Charlie Jingle.

"Fine," said Tanker thickly. "It's fine." There was a slur to his voice, which tipped off what was beginning to happen. Tanker's co-ordination system had been damaged.

"He's crackin' down, now. He's got all his power behind them punches. You can see it when he pivots."

"Yeah? Well I kin feel it when he punches," said the Tanker.

Charlie pumped him up with cooling fluid, worked his body. In the pit of his stomach was a sickness, a feeling of helplessness because Tanker's trouble was not where he could reach it, now. Now it was inside.

"He's gonna knock your head off, this one, Tank. You got a dent in it."

"I know I got a goddam dent. You don't hafta tell me."

Charlie put his gear out of the ropes.

"I told you it was a fix. Don't blame me for nothin'."

"Yeah. You wash your hands of it. Just like that guy in the whuddayacall...."

"Bible," said Charlie Jingle.

"Yeah," said Tanker. The bell sounded and he sprang to his feet.

At the end of the twenty-eighth, Tanker was dragging his feet, hanging on by a thread of will, except of course that there was no will in a fighting machine except the mechanistic desire to be a great fighting-machine.

"He'll nail you this one," said Charlie Jingle.

"Thass what you think," challenged Tanker.

"That's what I know. The fans are already going to the windows to collect their bets."

"Yeah? They got another guess com—Why ain't you collectin'?"

"I gotta stick it out, you know that!"

"You mean to say you really bet on Iron Man?"

"Sure," said Charlie Jingle, pulling a ticket out of his shirt pocket. "See?"

Tanker bent close, scrutinizing the ticket. He looked up into Charlie's face, his own blotchy with color.

"Five thousand dollars you bet on that bum?"

Charlie Jingle laughed.

"He don't look like no bum from where I am."

The buzzer sounded, drowning out the string of curses the Tanker loosed at him. Charlie calmly shoved his equipment out of the ring.

"Make it look good right to the end, you hear?"

The bell banged. Tanker Bell got up slowly, moving in a clumsy waddling gait toward the Champion, arms hanging like stiffened lead weights by his sides, head bulled forward, shoulders hunched. He did not spring, did not dance. He shuffled forward, shoulders rocking from side to side.

Iron-Man Pugg saw the stance of the beaten fighting-machine. He knew the dead-locked expression in the face, knew the shuffling, springless walk that indicated that the opponent was cold, was dead on his feet, jammed away inside, locked and frozen. But there was always the suspicion of trickery in him when he saw it.

He danced in lightly, speared the Tanker's head with a long series of jabs, chopped away at his mid-section, and then, as if he himself were absolutely cocksure, lowered his guard just a fraction of an inch out of the Tanker's reach. Nothing happened. The Tanker moved toward him, dead on his feet, arms limp. The Champion had to blast him back with a murderous right to prevent a head-on, chest-on collision. The Tanker staggered back, wobbled, his knees threatened to unflex and buckle, then the built-in instinct to go on picked him up, and he straightened.

Iron Man could hear, behind and around him, the swelling roar of the crowd. He knew it was for him. He had won. A hard, good fight. He had won. It remained now for him to put the trimmings on the package. Artfully he flirted in and around the Tanker, jabbing him lightly, ripping powerful right-hand shots to his head, toying with him. The crowd was roaring for blood. They wanted the finish. The Champion moved forward, wound up. He started his famous knockout sequence of punches, landing the first and second carefully, playing to his audience so that they could see what was happening and appreciate from the beginning what was about to happen. The Champion was enjoying himself. He worked with flash and flourish, and the crowd began to love it.

Then Tanker Bell came alive. The Champion was first to see the expression of his face, and a split-second before it happened, he knew he had been tricked. He would forever remember that expression. It was almost human. It was an expression of hatred. Of murderous, long-controlled rage, diabolical and lethal.

Tanker Bell ripped a blow to his jaw so well-set, so precise, so accurate, that when the Champion's head snapped back, the cable at the back of his neck broke. The Champion fell over on his back, striking the deck like fallen thunder. The Champion was not only 'out'—he was 'dead'.

There was a great, still silence in the arena as Tanker Bell strode back to his corner. It was as if the air, and sound, and people had been frozen. The Referee came to his senses first, stood over Iron-Man, and counted, with long strokes of the arm. At the last stroke, chaos broke loose. Fans and officials swarmed into the ring. The spectators roared. But Tanker Bell had eyes for one single human being in that arena. Charlie Jingle.

When he turned, Tanker saw Charlie Jingle doubled over the ropes, laughing.

A reporter pulled Tanker to the middle of the ring before he could get to Charlie. While they quizzed him and prodded him, Charlie Jingle remained doubled over the ropes in a violent fit of hysteria.

Finally they drew Charlie Jingle into the circle at ring-center. Had he had any doubts that Tanker would win?

"Never!"

Did he know that Tanker was faking toward the last? Certainly, came the laughing reply.

How much money had he bet on his fighter?

Ten thousand dollars, came the uproarious reply, and Tanker Bell bellowed, "He's a liar! He never bet a thing!"

The Press was astonished.

The Officials perked up their suspicious noses.

What did Tanker Bell mean?

"Ask him!" accused the glaring Tanker.

Did Charlie Jingle have the bet ticket with him? After all, Mister Jingle—news.

Charlie Jingle, laughing, with a flourish, produced a ticket from his shirt pocket.

Tanker Bell stared at it, goggle-eyed.

What would Charlie Jingle do with the money from the proceeds?

"Ruin Pugs, Inc.," said Charlie Jingle. "Me and a California Rabbit are goin' into business together. Ruinin' Pugs, Inc."

"Psychology," growled the Tanker. "The bum used his goddam psychology on me."

What was Tanker Bell referring to?

"Leave him alone," said Charlie Jingle, putting his arm around Tanker's shoulders. "Can't you see he's punch-happy?"